


I Don't Want Beautiful

by masquerad



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Depression, Gen, Hospital, M/M, Self-Harm, SnowBaz, attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masquerad/pseuds/masquerad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At 3:47 a.m., I received a call. It was Bunce, sobbing uncontrollably, voice bursting through the tears. </p><p>"Baz, I'm so sorry!" She choked. "Simon... He's tried to kill himself."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Want Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Uh... okay. So this isn't the original note that was on this fic. It's not even close. I just want to explain that I wrote this when I was in a dark place, after a friend took her own life. I've twisted the characters, I know. It may sound romanticising of suicide and mental illness and self harm— and to be honest it is. I know it is. But I'm going to leave it here, no matter how many times I consider taking it down, because it's a reminder that I'm no longer in such a bad place. And maybe because I'm a little proud of it.

I want things to hurt—  
Cigarette smoke to burn my lungs  
Glass shards to cut my skin  
Pavement to rasp against my knees

I do not want beautiful  
I want a goddamn tragedy

-Margeret Royer  
__________________________________

Everything seems to fade into the background as I rush through the hospital doors at 4 a.m.

I say his name at the desk in an out-of-breath sort of voice that doesn't really sound like my own. The lady sitting in the cushiony chair behind it gives me a sad smile and types in his name. She pushes red hair out of her face and looks back to me.

"Room 224, hon. The nearest elevator is just down the hall to the left." Her voice is sympathetic. She knows what happened to him.

How does it come about that everybody knew before I did?

I race to the elevator, pressing the button eagerly until the doors open with a loud _'ding!'_ I step inside and push the little grey knob for the second floor. The thirty second distance between two floors feels like years and it occurs to me that I might be crying. I wipe my eyes (don't want Bunce to see my tears, I tell myself). 

The doors open again and I dash out, accidentally colliding with a young girl waiting to board the elevator. With a muttered apology, I'm off down the hall to room 224. 

Bunce is sitting on the bed, eyes trained on Simon, tears dripping down her brownish face. She looks to me at the sound of the door shutting. Her lips are moving, but I don't hear or attempt to acknowledge what she says.

Simon is staring at me. As I look over at him, something strange wraps itself around my chest and makes it harder to breathe. When was The Greatest Mage reduced to the small boy lying before me? I close my eyes to stop the tears that keep coming.

"Simon." I breathe, frozen to the spot.

He attempts to reach for me but Bunce stops him with a gentle hand. That small movement seemingly unsticks my feet from the ground where I stand and I all but run to his bed.

My immediate instinct is to hug him or kiss him or ask if he's okay, but something in his desolate expression stops me. Where did the meretricious golden-haired dork from Watford School of Magicks go? (I realized only a few years ago that he wasn't actually meretricious at all; there's more to him than a pretty face.) 

I look to the girl sitting beside me, looking very much struck back to her eleven-year-old first year self. The little girl with the pleated grey skirts and pigtails, who I hated because she was friends with Simon when I couldn't be.

I feel that old hate creeping back at the fact that she's the one Simon lives with, that she gets to know things about him I don't know. I think about what she said on the phone. She knew he was having a hard time without magic. She had heard him crying before. She knew all of it. And she didn't tell me.

_Why didn't she tell me?_

"I'll give you two some time alone." Bunce whispers, voice rough. 

When Penelope stands I notice she's still in sleeping clothes: a thin blue sleeveless shirt and a pair of grey plaid pants. I instantly feel bad for my jealousy. She takes care of him. She makes him happy. And he's my biggest priority right now. My mind drifts to imagining how she found him.

_Walking into the bathroom at night to find your very best friend trying to drown himself in the bathtub. Bleeding._

It's an image I don't want to think about for long and I look back to Simon. Alive, lying in the bed. 

His blonde hair is still a bit wet, and normally I'd think it was sexy as hell but now it's a cruel reminder of what he tried to do. I try my hardest to not look over his body, but I can't help it as my eyes trail down his thin figure. Both of Simon's arms are bandaged, forearm to shoulder, and I can see thin cuts that look more like scratches across his chest. The smell of blood under his bandages that could be overpowering any other time is going to make me sick. Fresh tears well up against my will that I force myself to blink away. 

"I'm so glad you're—" I try to think of the right word.

Okay. Alright. _Alive_. None of them sound like something you say to a person who just tried to kill themself.

"I'm not." Simon murmurs, knowing exactly what that sentence was going to be. 

His voice is a bit odd from the tubes up his nose forcing him to breathe. I can tell he hates them from the way he keeps scrunching his nose. 

Blue eyes flick away from mine and I realize that the new tightness surrounding my chest is guilt. I know what my father would say. "Pitches don't feel guilt." But this isn't my father's wife lying broken in a hospital bed in the dead of night. This is my boyfriend, and I feel fucking guilty.

I should've seen it. His crumbling demeanour. His quietness. He had cut his hair. He wasn't eating as much. His sudden aversion to wearing tee shirts. The shadows under his eyes. And he never smiled.

It was painful to think back on it and I let the tears come and the guilt consume me.

"I'm sorry Simon." I choke out, still afraid to break down completely.

It should be me comforting him, but Simon, ever the noble knight in shining armour, takes my hand and doesn't let go. His calloused palm is familiar and it somehow brings just a little normality to this terrible night. 

Just a little.

"I'm getting some help, promise. I'll be alright." He says softly, voice strained, but I know when Simon Snow is lying.

I shake my head and he sits up, despite my unintelligible protests. He curls against my chest and I can feel his shaking but his eyes are empty and his face is blank. 

I wrap my arms around him (carefully: I don't want to hurt him), pressing my face to his short hair, feeling the damp curls against my skin. 

We sit like that for what seems like hours, but might've only been a few minutes, until I feel Simon stop shaking. 

His breathing evens out and I know he's fallen asleep. I lower his torso back to the bed and the image of him content and sleeping is comforting. He looks almost like old Simon, because the way you look sleeping doesn't ever change that much. Blue eyes hidden, curls tumbling over his forehead, face no longer in a mask of poorly hidden pain.

I sit there silently for a while, drying my tears and still holding his hand when Bunce comes in. 

I stand up to talk to her, releasing Simon's sweaty hand, frailer than it was a month ago. Something else I hadn't picked up on.

Penelope throws her thin arms around me, and starts sobbing against my chest, apologies bursting out between gasps and cries. My hand instinctively lifts to begin stroking her hair, which is bright blue right now. My other arm wraps around her and soon I'm crying again too, but it's okay because we have something in common. 

We both love Simon. And it seems at the moment, he's the only thing that really matters.


End file.
